They were a people descended from Norse (“Norman” comes from “Norseman”) Vikings from Denmark, Iceland and Norway who first arrived at the mouth of the Seine in 911. In the 10th and 11th centuries, they gave their name to Normandy, in NW France. Under their leader Rollo, they swore allegiance to King Charles III of West Francia and their descendants gradually became assimilated into the culture. They adopted the Gallo-Romance language of the Frankish land they settled and their dialect became known as Norman French. They also became exponents of the Catholic orthodoxy into which they assimilated. Under Richard I, Normandy was forged into a cohesive and formidable principality.
The Norman dynasty had a major political, cultural and military impact on medieval Europe and the Near East. The Normans were famed for their martial spirit and Catholic piety.
In the ninth century, the Normans captured Southern Spain and Anglo-Normans contributed to the Iberian Reconquista from the early eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries. An expedition on behalf of their duke, William the Conqueror, led to the Norman conquest of England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. They conquered southern Italy and Malta from the Saracens and Byzantines and founded the Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II.
The Normans were among the most travelled peoples of Europe, exposed to a wide variety of cultural influences including the Near East, some of which became incorporated in their art and architecture. Norman cultural and military influence spread from these new European centres to the Crusader states of the Near East founding the Principality of Antioch in the Levant, to Scotland and Wales in Great Britain, to Ireland, and to the coasts of North Africa and the Canary Islands.
The legacy of the Normans persists today through the regional languages and dialects of France, England, Spain, and Sicily, as well as the various cultural, judicial and political arrangements they introduced in their conquered territories.
Norman architecture. The Normans began constructing castles, their trademark architectural piece, in Italy from an early date. Their clever use of the local stone artisans together with the vast riches amassed from their enslaved population, made such tremendous feats possible as majestic as some of the ancient Roman structures they tried to emulate. They elaborated on the Early Christian basilica plan, longitudinal with side aisles and an apse, and a western façade with two towers.
Sicily’s Norman period lasted from circa 1070 until about 1200. Here a distinctive variation incorporated Byzantine and Saracen (Islamic) influences. Ancient Rome’s invention of the arch is the basis of all Norman architecture. The Norman arch is round and grand archways are designed to evoke feelings of awe and are very commonly seen as the entrance to large religious buildings such as cathedrals.
The buildings show massive proportions in simple geometries. The architecture was decorated in gilded mosaics such as that at the cathedral at Monreale and the Palatine Chapel in Palermo.